internet

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Due to the inability of the Synology 411j NAS to host this wordpress site, we’ve finally moved to Amazon’s EC2 service. This is Amazon’s cloud service with its micro instance starting at USD15 a month if you run it 24/7.

Yes, USD15 is a little pricey for just a private wordpress blog, but Amazon allows new users to try it for free for a year. And since they have a data centre in Singapore, I thought why not?

The migration was simple enough. First step was to set up the EC2 instance, so we used one free preconfigured image by BitNami. Picked it up on the AWS Marketplace, then it’s up and running in no time.

Second step was migrating the entries over from the old blog. WordPress has a built in Import & Export feature so all the posts, including attachments, were migrated over effortlessly. Though I just realized we’re missing the posts from our guest bloggers; not sure when this happened, but it’s the same as the old site so it must’ve gotten deleted or transferred to another user during previous migrations.

Next was to point the site address from the old site to the new. The DNS server will continue running on the NAS, so it was just a matter of changing the CNAME entry from our current dynamic DNS to the Amazon one. There was a mention somewhere online that the Amazon hostname will change if the instance is restarted, so we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

After that, WordPress was running off the /wordpress subdirectory, so we needed to SSH into the instance and setup redirection from the root directory. A quick uncomment in /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf/httpd.conf and it happens, but permalinks are still pointing to the /wordpress subdirectory so I’m going to have to figure out how to work that with redirection.

As you may be able to tell, the server is running zippy as ever. Will just need to keep a reminder to move the blog again to a paid local web host before the AWS Free Tier expires. 😛

So I’ve recently acquired a Synology DS411j, which I hoped would have flawless built-in DLNA compatibility with my PS3. I should’ve known it was too much to ask for proper transcoding.

There’ve been plenty of discussion regarding how to get the PS3 media server, something I’ve been using on my Windows PC, installed on a Synology NAS. The most complete guide I’ve found is here on Mark in the Dark. I followed it, but I had to do a few things differently and additionally to get it to work proper.

In the end, transcoding was horrifyingly slow on the 411j’s processor. I could barely get the first frames off a 720p movie. But for those who have more powerful units and would like to try anyway, here are the modifications to the original guide. Props to Mark and synops for the original guide. My DSM version is 4.0-2197.

changed from a 2-column layout to 3-column layout cuz there was just too much info for a single column. the rightmost column (i tweaked K2’s CSS a bit cuz I didn’t like the extra column being on the left) will now contain stuff i wanna look at on a daily basis; external links basically. the rest will remain on the original column.

the new layout looks good on Firefox, but I don’t have IE7 to test on. do let me know if it looks borked.

wordpress has tag clouds now. not sure how to use them along with categories. :

So Facebook has been taking up lots of time, especially with all its funny (and fun) applications. One app that’s been taking most of my time is Warbook, which is a simple but addictive web-based MMORPG game that’s linked to Facebook.

One of the spells that you can cast in Warbook is Alchemy, which basically spends 20 mana to produce a good amount of gold. A normal player gains 6 mana each hour, so that means you can cast Alchemy every 4 hours. Problem is, my mana cap is low at 60, and if I leave the game for too long I’ll end up with lots of wasted mana. It’s not like WoW where you can actually drink and stuff to regain mana; you actually have to wait to get it replenished.

That’s when I found this Automating Facebook Interaction using Ruby and WWW::Mechanize article, showing an example of how you can automate posting to someone’s wall with random quotes. Since then, I’ve extended the example to cast Alchemy for me. Put it together with cron, and I have it running every 4 hours. ^o^

Read up a bit more on Ruby’s syntax, and now I have daily runs to use up my Vampires attack quota, and do 20 random attacks on Vampires vs. Werewolves. Yeah, they’re silly apps, but me like RPG styles stuff. 😛

Still a bunch of quirks to work out though. Facebook connections hasn’t been so good lately, and there’ve been disconnects while the scripts are running. I’ll probably get to that sometime, but not so soon.

Server was constantly hanging this morning, right after I restarted my torrents after clearing some space on the drives. Further checks revealed that it hangs during an fsck check on one of the 250GB drives, so I might actually have some bad sectors on it. Sigh, guess I’ll have to get another drive and move stuff over before it dies completely.

Gold Coast post is finally up. See previous post. ^_^ The pictures are supposed to be thumbnails, but somehow WPG2 decided to show the mid size versions instead. They’ve been scrunched in to fit the theme, but oh well, just click on em to see how it’s supposed to look like. Can’t add captions either, cuz G2’s edit photo options aren’t working somehow.

The visual editor for WordPress seems to be working fine again. Co-authors, feel free to enable it again in your profile to give it a go.

I now have a second monitor plugged in, so that I can chat on MSN and WoW at the same time. WoW now runs in maximised windowed mode, so that my mouse can actually leave the WoW area onto the 2nd display. I lose some FPS, but hey, it’s worth it. ^_^

Initially I thought my PSU was fucked, so I bought a new one to see if that helps. It didn’t. Using the process of elimination, I then extended the process to the less probably components, and that led me to my RAM.

Two pieces of 1GB Crucial Ballistix RAM, will no longer allow the computer to boot. Okay, no worries. I’ll just send them all the way back to the US for replacements. In the meantime, I’ll just borrow half of Mario’s RAM, which was 2x 512MB KVRs.

So usually when a computer dies, it’s usually one component that’s the problem. With that in mind, I plugged everything back into the original PSU and wallah, everything was fine and dandy.

But my success was shortlived, after sending my computer back onto S3 standby mode. After a few times, it too won’t boot up. Another fucking round of elimination showed that now I have another 2 bad pieces of RAM. Even worse, my hard drive can’t be detected either.

So all in all, i have lost 2 pieces of performance RAM, 2 pieces of value RAM, 1 power supply and possibly 1 hard drive. Add one more power supply that i replaced earlier, and you have a whole lot of fucking failed pieces of equipment. And I still don’t know what’s causing it! Of course, all the signs point back to the PSU, cuz how else can components be instantly corrupted besides static and power fluctuations? But after this episode, I’m just not so sure of myself anymore… I might even come to hate computers… >_<

<link> once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of ‘ hot xxx galore’. While i clicked my fav’rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, ” ‘Tis not possible!”, i muttered, ” give me back my free hardcore!”….. quoth the server, 404.
<hokage> *cries*, scary….